Careers involving data expertise are soaring. Technological advances are made each and every day. One report predicts that by 2020, the number of positions for data and analytics talent in the United States will increase by 364,000 openings, to 2,720,000. How many of those positions will be held by men?

Currently, 85 percent of data scientists and 74 percent of predictive analytics professionals are male. Percentage-wise women ranked close to their male counterparts in terms of holding job titles like data scientist and even significantly surpassed them in careers like data analyst. However, overall females represent just over 16 percent of the total.

It is more than an equality or justice issue – not that those are not important. However, it is critical now more than ever for organizations to realize that more diversity equals smart business. The results reaped by analytics processes are dependent upon what queries are made in the first place. Men and women do not think the same and therefore won’t necessarily think to ask the exact same questions of the data at their disposal. Companies that don’t encourage diversity in their data ranks are missing out on discovering new insights that could lead to new business opportunities.

Melody K. Smith

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